By Mark LaPedus
Enterprise-based bring your own device (BYOD) programs continue to become more commonplace. In fact, 38% of companies expect to stop providing devices to workers by 2016, according to a global survey of CIOs by Gartner.

What would happen if half of all global DRAM production, two-thirds of NAND flash manufacturing and 70% of the world’s tablet display supply suddenly disappeared from the market? For high-tech companies, this could be the outcome if current tensions escalate to the point of war on the Korean peninsula, resulting in the disruption of South Korea’s technology manufacturing base, says IHS iSuppli.

Intel telegraphed its future directions. The chip giant has named Brian Krzanich as its next chief executive, succeeding Paul Otellini. Krzanich, Intel’s chief operating officer since January 2012, will become the sixth CEO in Intel’s history. As announced, Otellini will step down as CEO. In a research note, Hans Mosesmann, an analyst with Raymond James, said: “We are not entirely shocked by the news but note that some investors preferred an external option on the belief that new blood was needed. Giving Krzanich’s manufacturing background we think the appointment is an indication that Intel will continue Paul Otellini’s strategy of building bigger/better fabs to attack the market. We also believe the move toward better manufacturing processes (like the 450mm transition) will remain front and center.” Added RBC Capital analyst Doug Freedman: “The move to appoint Renee James (as president) is likely in support of the vision of Krzanich’s and the board has laid out for the future of Intel. This appointment validates the increasing importance of on-going software development to Intel’s future, whether it be internally or in collaboration with partners.”

Microsemi has inked a foundry deal with Intel. Microsemi is currently engaged with customers and has started designs utilizing Intel’s 22nm tri-gate technology. Product delivery is anticipated to begin in late 2014 to early 2015.

Infineon and GlobalFoundries announced a joint technology development and production agreement for 40nm embedded flash (eFlash) process technology. The cooperation will focus on technology development based on Infineon’s eFlash cell design and manufacturing of automotive and security microcontrollers with 40nm process structures.

GlobalFoundries has collaborated with Cadence to provide pattern classification data for manufacturing processes of 20nm and 14nm. GlobalFoundries is using the Cadence Pattern Classification and Pattern Matching Solutions.

SEMI announced that Philip Yeo, chairman of Spring Singapore, and Lee Kok Choy, country manager of Micron Technology Singapore, have been voted by the SEMI Singapore Regional Advisory Board as recipients of two prestigious awards recognizing their contributions to the development and success of the Southeast Asian semiconductor industry. The awards will be presented during festivities held at Semicon Singapore 2013 on May 7.

Soitec has finalized a ZAR 1,000,000,000 (more than $100 million) solar financing bond issued by CPV Power Plant No.1 Bond SPV, an affiliate of Soitec Solar GmbH. The bonds will finance the construction of a 44 MWp utility-scale concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) solar power plant in Touwsrivier, South Africa.

Applied Materials and The Center for Science Teaching and Learning (CSTL) announced the San Francisco Bay Area grand-prize winning team and nine finalist teams in the 2013 Clean Tech Competition.

Rudolph has purchased selected assets related to 3D metrology from Tamar Technology.

Proteus Digital Health has completed a second closing of its Series F financing, raising $62.5 million in total. New corporate investor Oracle joins Otsuka, Novartis, Sino Portfolio and others in this funding round. Proteus is working to create a new category of products. Called Digital Medicines, these new pharmaceuticals will contain a tiny sensor that can communicate, via a digital health feedback system, vital information about an individual’s medication-taking behavior and how their body is responding.

Is Mindspeed Technologies on the block? The supplier of semiconductor solutions for communications has retained Morgan Stanley as a financial advisor to assist the board in evaluating various strategic alternatives available to the company.

Spansion has acquired the microcontroller and analog business of Fujitsu Semiconductor for approximately $110 million, plus approximately $65 million for inventory.

Amkor Technology announced that Stephen Kelley has been appointed to serve as president and CEO. He succeeds Ken Joyce, who previously announced his intention to retire.

ASE remained the world’s largest OSAT in 2012, according to the new rankings from Gartner.

By Mark LaPedus

For years, the DRAM industry has been engulfed in a downturn. Sadly, vendors have grown accustom to overcapacity, falling ASPs and losses. Now, the tide is turning, at least based on the data from Micron Technology. Micron posted a loss this week, but the company provided some surprising and welcomed news about DRAMs. “Despite a weak PC environment and more DRAM capacity from the revised Inotera agreement, Micron is allocating DRAM to some channel and OEM customers. DRAM capacity continues to go offline or transition to NAND, and Micron envisions no new capacity coming online in either 2013 or 2014. This suggests to us that the recent ASP dynamic is here to stay,” said Hans Mosesmann, an analyst with Raymond James. Another chip analyst, Jagadish Iyer of Piper Jaffray, said: “Micron articulated that DRAM capacity likely remains constrained for the next two years as near-term allocation prevails.”

What about NAND flash? “We expect industry supply to be far more rational than years past. Expect NAND ASP trends to strengthen through 2Q ‘13 with handset ramps pending,” said Doug Freedman, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets. Added Monika Garg, an analyst with Pacific Crest: “During our meetings with semiconductor capital equipment companies last month, all companies highlighted that they have not yet received any NAND capacity orders. These comments lend conviction that we should see strong NAND supply-demand balance in 2013.”

Richard Hill, the former chairman and CEO of Novellus, is back in the news. Hill, an outspoken executive who left Novellus after it was acquired by Lam, is leading a committee of independent directors for troubled Tessera. The committee is refocusing Tessera’s DigitalOptics unit. This follows a move by an investment firm to oust Tessera’s CEO and the board.  This week, the board began a search for a new chief executive to replace Robert A. Young, who was ousted. And Hill is the new chairman.

The Saratoga County Industrial Development Agency has approved about $387 million in sales tax exemptions for GlobalFoundries, according to the Saratogian. The tax breaks are for an R&D center and a proposed fab in New York.

In a blog, an investment site discusses its price estimates for Applied Materials. It also gives a fair and balanced analysis of the company.

RF Micro Devices will phase out manufacturing in its Newton Aycliffe, U.K.-based GaAs pHEMT facility and transition most GaAs manufacturing to its GaAs HBT manufacturing facility in Greensboro, N.C. RFMD will also partner with leading GaAs foundries for additional capacity. The U.K.-based GaAs pHEMT facility had been RFMD’s primary source for cellular switches. However, RFMD has transitioned to higher-performance, lower-cost silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology for the cellular switch.

North American-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted a book-to-bill ratio of 1.10 in February, according to SEMI. This compares to a ratio of 1.11 in January.

SEMI has released the 4th edition of the International Technology Roadmap for PV (ITRPV), the global collaborative process that informs PV cell, module and system manufacturers, equipment and materials suppliers, and other industry stakeholders on key technology trends in the solar field.

Mentor Graphics and Mercedes-Benz Trucks announced the application of the Mentor Capital software suite to the development of Daimler’s flagship heavy truck, the new Actros.

TEL’s Q3 orders were up 27%, above the firm’s original guidance of “slightly up,” according to Chips and Dips, a blog site.

Golden Gate Capital, a venture capital firm, recently sold its e-beam company, Vistec, to two different companies. In one transaction, Raith recently acquired Vistec’s Gaussian e-beam unit, called Vistec Lithography. Vistec Lithography continues to specialize in conventional direct-write applications in the aerospace and military arena. In a separate move, the Heidenhain Group recently acquired Vistec’s variable shaped beam (VSB) e-beam unit. That operation, Vistec Electron Beam, sells a single-beam e-beam tool based on VSB technology.

Samsung’s new Galaxy S4 smartphone is causing a buzz. In a blog DisplaySearch answered a pressing question: How Did Samsung achieve full HD in the AMOLED display?

Spansion and XMC, a Chinese foundry, announced an expanded partnership to develop and manufacture Spansion’s 32nm NOR flash memory. The agreement expands XMC’s current 300mm manufacturing of Spansion’s 65nm and 45nm flash memory technology.

VLSI Research is raising its 2013 fab tool growth forecast to minus 4.6%. Previously, the 2013 forecast was minus 5.3%. “Memory suppliers are beginning to loosen their purse strings. The orders are technology buys. Capacity expansions are not in the radar. Foundry is cooling due to the pull back by Apple along with some inventory buildups,” according to the firm.

Global PC shipments were expected to decline by 7.7% in the first quarter, according to IDC. However, IDC’s February monthly data suggest that the market could see a drop touching double-digits in the first quarter, according to the firm.

A predicted surge of smaller, lower-priced devices in the tablet market has led IDC to increase its 2013 forecast for the worldwide tablet market to 190.9 million, up from its previous forecast of 172.4 million units.

Samsung catapulted to the top of the optoelectronics supplier ranking in 2012 from 12th place in 2011 after it gained full ownership of Samsung LED, a 50-50 joint venture in light-emitting diodes that was created in 2009 between Samsung Electronics and affiliate Samsung Electro-Mechanics, according to IC Insights.

By Mark LaPedus
The NAND flash memory market is entering into a new and painful cycle, a period that will impact suppliers, OEMs and fab tool vendors alike.

For some time, there has been an oversupply and depressed pricing in the NAND market. In mid-2011, Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix and Toshiba put on the brakes in their capital spending plans. And in recent months, NAND suppliers in total have announced plans to cut 150,000 wafer starts per month, or about 12% of the world’s NAND capacity, amid ongoing losses and sluggish demand.

Just as suppliers moved to cut their production, spot shortages of NAND surfaced at some OEMs in early September. Most OEMs are not seeing any shortages, but that could all change. Apple, the world’s largest buyer of NAND, could cause some gyrations in the channels as it ramps up its new iPhone 5.

So what’s the outlook in the fluid and confusing NAND market? Amid a bitter legal battle with Samsung, speculation is rampant throughout the NAND industry about whether Apple will swap suppliers from Samsung to SK Hynix, Toshiba and Micron. If that happens, Samsung would face an oversupply in NAND, while others may see capacity shortfalls.

The outlook is also not so rosy for fab tool vendors, which counted on a big capital spending cycle for NAND. In fact, NAND suppliers are expected to push out their capital spending plans until June of 2013 and perhaps beyond, said Vijay Rakesh, an analyst with Sterne Agee.

The lack of capital spending is expected to create a shortfall in NAND capacity, creating perhaps a long cycle of acute shortages. Presently, there is a capacity glut for NAND. “Demand should catch up with capacity by mid-2013,” said Jim Handy, an analyst with Objective-Analysis. “Then, there could be NAND shortages from then until the middle of 2015.”

In total, suppliers are expected to ship 28.013 billion gigabits of NAND in 2012, which represents a bit growth of 49% over 2011, according to Stern Agee. The figure is lower than the historical averages in terms of bit growth, which ranges from 65% to 85%, according to the firm. In total, suppliers are expected to ship 43.756 billion gigabits of NAND in 2013, which represents a bit growth of 56%, according to Stern Agee.

Boom to bust
NAND has seen its share of boom and bust cycles. Several years ago, NAND vendors witnessed a meteoric rise amid a boom for cell phones, flash cards, USB drives and other products.

Then, over the last two or so years, Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix and Toshiba began to expand their NAND production at a dramatic pace. The goal was to meet the anticipated demand for the next wave of product drivers, such as smartphones, solid-state drives (SSDs), tablets and ultrabooks.

Seeking to drive down product costs, particularly for SSDs, NAND vendors took the lead in process technology. For example, the Toshiba-SanDisk duo has been ramping up parts based on the world’s most advanced process, a 19nm technology.

The bottom fell out of the NAND market in recent times. NAND vendors built up too much fab capacity. Average selling prices (ASPs) for NAND fell by 46% in the first half of 2012. Demand for NAND in smartphones and tablets remains overwhelming, but SSD and ultrabook shipments have been disappointing thus far.

“The adoption of solid-state drives is not ramping as quickly as forecast, and with only a modest increase in the bits per box for mobile devices, we now see NAND bit growth in the range of 60% to 65%,” said Mike Splinter, chairman and chief executive of Applied Materials, during a recent conference call. As a result, NAND vendors in total plan to cut production by roughly 150,000 wafer starts per month “on top of a reduction in their capital spending,” Splinter said.

Based on recent announcements, Toshiba is cutting 30% of its NAND production, Micron is reducing its output by 15%, and SK Hynix and Samsung are each at 10%, said Hans Mosesmann, an analyst with Raymond James. “Using these percentages, this would equate to a 12% reduction in supply,” he said.

NAND vendors expected bit growth of about 70% in 2012, but they have lowered their forecasts to about 45%, said Robert Witkow, president of Westwood Marketing, a research firm. “All manufacturers are regulating bit growth by slowing the transitions of 2xnm to the 1xnm node,” Witkow said. “All manufacturers are slowing their transitions from 64-Gbit to 128-Gbit devices.”

One OEM, OCZ Technology, lowered its quarterly forecast in September, saying it could not obtain enough NAND parts for its SSDs. “My price survey and other feedback I’ve received confirm some tightness (in NAND supply),” Witkow said. “If we have allocation in NAND, which I think is possible in 2012, it will be short-lived. I think the NAND market will ease at the end of October, as production sold for Christmas winds down.”

The average selling price (ASP) outlook is good for consumers, but horrific for suppliers. In September 2010, NAND crossed the $1.00/GB price point. The price dropped to $0.35/GB in May of 2012, according to Objective-Analysis’ Handy. “It hit $0.31/GB in June, but then it went back up to $0.36/GB in August,” Handy said. “The June pricing was below manufacturing costs, which is unsustainable. It could go as low as $0.31/GB again, but not temporarily as it did before. That would be permanent.”

NAND CapEx slows
On the fab tool side of the equation, Applied Materials and others saw a softening in demand for gear in the summer, due in part to sharp declines in foundry and NAND spending. By late August, tool vendors saw a further deterioration in NAND, causing more tool pushouts, according to Applied’s Splinter.

Capital spending will remain anemic in DRAMs. The foundries expanded their 28nm capacities earlier this year. But more recently, foundries put the brakes on spending to digest their new tool buys, Splinter said. In total, fab tool capital spending is expected to reach $30 billion to $33 billion in 2012, down 10% to 20% from 2011, he said. In its original projection, Applied forecasted a flat year in fab tool spending.

There’s good and bad news for fab tool vendors. For example, Samsung, the world’s largest NAND vendor, is cutting some NAND production. But the company also is converting some of its NAND production to system LSI and foundry services. As it turns out, logic is more profitable than NAND.

Samsung still wants to remain the leader in NAND. Last year, for example, the company began ramping up NAND production in Line 16 in Korea. “Samsung has slowed its expansion of Line 16, but it did not cut wafer starts,” said Westwood Marketing’s Witkow.

In Austin, Texas, Samsung has two 300mm fabs, plus a copper metallization facility. One fab is a foundry/logic plant. The fab, dubbed S2, is a foundry plant dedicated for Apple.

The other fab in Austin is currently a NAND facility. Austin represents about 20% of Samsung’s total NAND capacity, according to Barclays Capital. However, Samsung is converting that fab from NAND into a system LSI plant, said Christian Gregor Dieseldorff, an analyst with SEMI. “Ultimately, all of Austin will be converted to system LSI,” Dieseldorff said.

In Korea, Samsung’s main logic/foundry fab is called S1, which is being expanded. Samsung is converting its Line 14 plant in Korea from NAND to 28nm logic capacity. Line 14 is now part of S1, he said.

Meanwhile, Toshiba, the world’s second largest NAND vendor, in June announced plans to cut NAND production by about 30% at its Yokkaichi Operation fab in Mie Prefecture, Japan. At a minimum, this could remove 6% of worldwide NAND supply, according to Barclays Capital.

Micron, the world’s third largest NAND vendor, is re-balancing its capacity. “Micron increased its triple-level-cell (TLC) wafer production slightly, but reduced its multi-level-cell (MLC) slightly in June. My belief is that the move was taken to support the Lexar consumer product builds for Christmas. Micron will likely shift (its production) back to MLC shortly,” said Westwood Marketing’s Witkow.

SK Hynix, the world’s fourth largest NAND vendor, added 10,000 wafer starts at its new M12 fab in Korea. But SK Hynix is also mulling plans to shift its capacity from NAND to DRAM in M12, according to Barclays Capital.

By Mark LaPedus
Ten years ago, Intel Corp. declared that flash memory would stop scaling at 65nm, prompting the need for a new replacement technology.

Thinking the end was near for flash, a number of companies began to develop various next-generation memory types, such as 3D chips, FeRAM, MRAM, phase-change memory (PCM), and ReRAM. Many of these technologies were originally billed as “universal memories.” By definition, a “universal memory” is a single product that could replace all four conventional memory types: DRAM, NAND, NOR and SRAM.

As it turned out, conventional memory has scaled much further than previously thought, pushing out the need for the next-generation technologies. And, in fact, most next-generation memory types are still in R&D. They are expensive to make and difficult to scale.

While there is a frenzy of activity in next-generation memories, the rhetoric surrounding the “universal memory” is fading. Because of the complexity and soaring I/O requirements in today’s systems, there is no single next-generation memory type that has the cost benefits of DRAM, the speed of SRAM, and the non-volatility of flash.

“It is unlikely that we will see a universal memory,” said Gill Lee, a senior director and principal member of the technical staff at Applied Materials. “I do not see a new memory type can replace both NAND and DRAM.”

Clearly, after years of hype, the universal memories have come back down to earth. In possibly the best-case scenario, a next-generation technology could become a mere one-to-one replacement for today’s memory types, Lee said. “We might see them in certain applications and segments,” he said.

Universal niches
In the meantime, HP, Intel, IBM, Micron, SK Hynix, Toshiba, Samsung and others are developing various next-generation memory types. Because it remains unclear which technology will replace DRAM and flash, the larger players are developing most next-generation memory types.

There is a sense of urgency to develop these technologies. DRAM could stop scaling somewhere at the 1nm node. “There is not much room for the floating gate to scale in flash. Nobody really believes that planar NAND can go below 10nm,” Lee added.

In one possible scenario in the next five years (or longer), a next-generation MRAM called spin-torque MRAM (STT-RAM) is the candidate to replace DRAM and SRAM. Also in the distant future, 3D NAND and ReRAM may replace NAND flash and the disk drive.

And PCM could not only displace NOR, but it could also emerge as a new class of so-called storage-class memory. MRAM and ReRAM also are being positioned as storage-class memories, which supposedly fit between the main memory and the processor to alleviate the I/O bottleneck in a system.

Alan Niebel, chief executive of Web-Feet Research, has a different viewpoint. The next-generation memory types are classified as storage-class memories, which can be sub-divided into two groups: memory (DRAM-like) and storage (NAND-like), Niebel said. “Possibly by 2020, one technology may be able to bridge the cost, performance, persistence, and power parameters to satisfy both memory and storage needs,” he said. “In the meantime, the leading replacements for NAND in storage are phase-change and ReRAM. STT-RAM could be a DRAM replacement, but it is too costly for storage.”

NAND and DRAM replacements
If or when planar NAND runs out of gas, the prevailing school of thought is that 3D NAND will replace NAND, followed much later by ReRAM. ReRAM is non-volatile and based on the electronic switching of a resistor element material between two stable resistive states. Startup Adesto is sampling one form of ReRAM, dubbed conductive bridging RAM (CBRAM), which is an EEPROM replacement. HP, Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix and others are working on NAND-replacement ReRAMs.

The first ReRAMs are based on a 1T1R (1 transistor and 1 resistor) structure. Next-generation ReRAMs are based on a 1R structure and consist of various architectures, such as 3D and cross-point arrays. These ReRAMs present several challenges, prompting some to believe that these memories won’t appear until 2015 or so. “Each of the metal layers requires advanced lithography, which is very expensive,” said David Eggleston, senior vice president at Rambus. In 2012, Rambus acquired ReRAM developer Unity Semiconductor.

At a recent event, SK Hynix outlined its strategy, which typifies the roadmap of a NAND vendor. First, SK Hynix will continue to extend planar NAND. “I think scaling NAND to 12nm will be very challenging,” said Sung Wook Park, executive vice president and head of the R&D Center at SK Hynix.

SK Hynix is separately developing a 12nm planar NAND part and 3D NAND. 3D NAND is targeted as the successor to planar NAND, Park said. In addition, the company is also working on next-generation STT-RAM with Toshiba. SK Hynix is separately co-developing PCM with IBM.

The industry also is keeping a close eye on SK Hynix and Hewlett-Packard, which have been jointly working on commercializing HP’s memristor by 2015. A form of ReRAM, memristor is a passive two-terminal electronic device. In memristance, if the flow of a charge is stopped by turning off the applied voltage, this component will “remember” its last resistance.

Initially, devices based on the memristor are aimed for storage, said Janice Nickel, research manager at the Cognitive Research Laboratory at HP Labs. “Then, we will look to move up from there.”

SK Hynix has developed an 8-Mbit test chip based on the memristor. HP itself has demonstrated a 54nm cross-bar structure. “The challenge is the integration of new materials,” Nickel said.

Others hope to ship ReRAMs sooner than later. Micron and Sony, for example, have been co-developing so-called Adaptive ReRAM for possible introduction in 2014. Adaptive ReRAMs are expected to have up to 8-Gbit capacities. Initially, Adaptive ReRAM is geared for cache module applications, said Keiichi Tsutsui, senior manager of advanced memory systems at Sony.

Like NAND, the industry is searching for a DRAM successor. When the DRAM runs out of gas, 3D-based Wide I/0 technology is one possible successor. In addition, Micron and Samsung are developing a 3D DRAM technology called the Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC).

There are several challenges to develop 3D DRAM. Longer term, STT-RAM may replace DRAM. Everspin, IBM-TDK, Qualcomm-TSMC, Samsung, Toshiba and others are working on STT-RAM.

STT-RAM makes use of a spin-transfer torque technology. This is an effect in which the orientation of a magnetic layer in a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) can be modified using a spin-polarized current. STT-RAMs are fast and non-volatile, but the challenges include scalability and unstable switching currents in the MTJ memory cell.

“It’s really too early for MRAM to replace DRAM,” said Phillip LoPresti, president and chief executive of Everspin Technologies, an MRAM supplier. “MRAM is always going to be behind in cost and density.”

For now, MRAM is geared for the embedded market. Everspin, for example, is shipping first-generation MRAMs based on a toggle-write technology, mainly for the battery-backed SRAM replacement market. In addition, Everspin is also readying the world’s first STT-RAM. In a slide at a recent event, Everspin called it a ST-RAM or ”SpinRAM.”

Using an alternate method for programming an MTJ element, ST-RAM is mainly geared to replace “battery-backed DRAM” or persistent RAM in hard drives and related storage applications, said Steffen Hellmold, vice president of marketing at Everspin. In an invited paper at the upcoming IEDM, Everspin will describe how they built the largest functional ST-MRAM circuit ever built, a 64-Mbit device with good electrical characteristics.

For main-memory in PCs and other systems, DRAM will remain the dominant technology for some time. “MRAM will not replace DRAM for at least the five years,” Hellmold said. “I am willing to place a bet on it.”

New memory phase
Like MRAM and ReRAM, PCM is in its infancy. PCM is difficult to scale and limited by the power required to change from the crystalline to the amorphous state. Researchers are looking at germanium telluride (GeTe) materials to overcome these limitations, said Jean-Luc Delcarri, general manager of Altatech, a subsidiary of Soitec.

Gary Kotzur, a distinguished engineer at PC maker Dell, said PCM has a potential place in online transaction processing (OLTP) systems. For OLTP, PCM needs to have “faster writes,” he said. “The power must be lower.”

Another application is online analytical processing, but for this application, “we need much higher densities,” he added.

By Mark LaPedus
According to a recent study commissioned by Intel, nearly all countries surveyed say that mobile manners have become worse compared to a year ago.

Spot shortages, and possible price increases, for NAND flash have suddenly surfaced in the market amid recent production cuts by major memory suppliers.

SEMI said total fab spending could increase by 16.7% in 2013 and reach a new record high of $42.7 billion.

Intel said that Q3 revenue is expected to be below the company’s previous outlook due to lackluster PC demand. Full-year capital spending is expected to be below the low-end of Intel’s previous outlook of $12.1 billion to $12.9 billion, as the company accelerates the re-use of existing equipment to the 14nm node. “Intel’s guidance cut seems widely expected given many reports about weak consumer PC demand due to macro weakness in China and Europe and with a production/demand air pocket before Win8 launches in late October,” said Craig Berger, an analyst with FBR.

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) said that worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $24.4 billion for the month of July 2012, a slight increase of 0.2% from the previous month. C.J. Muse, an analyst with Barclays Capital, sees a downturn coming based on the SIA figures. “As expected SIA data released saw semi revenues post modest growth and confirms our outlook for semis to track down -2% to -8% year-over-year, depending on demand in the month of September,” he said.

For months, there have been rumors that Fujitsu will sell its chip unit to Renesas. In the meantime, Fujitsu Semiconductor has unloaded and sold its LSI assembly and test facilities to J-Devices.

Integrated Silicon Solution has completed an equity investment in Nanya. ISSI will have access to leading-edge process technologies with certain volume guarantees from Nanya for specialty DRAM production. Taiwan DRAM maker Nanya will also provide foundry support capabilities for the continued development of ISSI’s NOR flash and analog products.

Altera unveiled several key technologies planned for its next-generation of 20nm products, including stacked 3D chips.

Cree rolled out 100mm epitaxial wafers based on silicon carbide (SiC). The wafers enable high-voltage bipolar devices such as IGBTs.

Semiconductor R&D spending is projected to hit a record-high of $53.4 billion in 2012, according to IC Insights.

The Microsoft/Intel cartel, known as Wintel, now finds itself playing catch-up in the new era of smartphones and media tablets, according to IHS iSuppli.

Global smart meter shipments grew 33.6% in Q2 over the previous quarter, and were up nearly 51.3% year over year, according to IDC.

Despite a fuzzy economic outlook and concerns regarding the decline in sales of consumer LCD products, TFT LCD panel suppliers are still expecting 2012 shipments to grow 8% to 757 million and revenue to increase 13% to $85.3 billion, according to NPD DisplaySearch.

By Mark LaPedus
For years, many have predicted the end of flash memory scaling, particularly NAND, but the technology continues to defy the odds as it moves down the process curve.

Still, there are signs that the floating gate structure in today’s flash memory is on its last legs. The floating gate is seeing an undesirable reduction in the control gate to capacitive coupling ratio. And there is an increase in cell-to-cell interference in the word lines.

“The floating gate has been very successful in scaling down to the current 20nm node or even the 1xnm node,” said Gill Lee, a senior director and principal member of the technical staff at Applied Materials. “There is not much room for the floating gate to scale. Nobody really believes that planar NAND can go below 10nm.”

Today, the Toshiba-SanDisk duo is shipping NAND devices based on the world’s most advanced process, a 19nm technology. Going forward in NAND, Lee and others see at least two or more nodes remaining in the 1xnm regime.

The question is what’s after NAND flash? Currently, the industry is pursuing three basic categories in the NAND replacement sweepstakes: scaling existing NAND; 3D NAND; and the next-generation memory types.

There is no clear-cut winner right now. But in some circles, the initial and most promising successor is 3D NAND. “3D NAND is an extension of existing NAND,” Lee said. “Vertical NAND is in the development stage right now. The timeline for mass production is as early as 2013. Some companies have announced 2015.”

Defying the odds
Clearly, flash scaling has defied the odds. Ten years ago, Intel, the first vendor that commercialized NOR flash, predicted that flash would hit the wall at 65nm. Banking on those predictions, a number of firms began to develop various next-generation memory technologies that could replace NAND, NOR or DRAM—or all three. FeRAM, MRAM, phase-change and ReRAM are among those candidates.

The prediction was wrong, however. NAND has scaled down to 19nm, while NOR has migrated to 45nm. Thanks to 193nm immersion lithography and self-aligned double patterning (SADP), flash vendors have been able to scale the floating gate.

The ability to scale NAND and NOR has also pushed out the need for the next-generation memory types. And besides, most of these new memory types are still in R&D. They are expensive to make and difficult to scale.

Scaling today’s NAND down to 10nm is also difficult. NAND vendors may have to use self-aligned quadruple patterning, as extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography remains delayed. “NAND is even beyond current EUV resolutions. Even if EUV is available as of today, double patterning has to be used together with EUV,” Lee said.

There is also a remote chance that today’s 2D NAND could scale further using charge trap technology. Charge trap uses a silicon nitride film to store electrons. “I think the generation of charge trap flash as a planar device is limited,” he said.

Initially, if or when today’s NAND runs out of gas, the industry is banking on 3D NAND. “With 3D NAND, scaling is no longer driven by lithography. The gate length is defined by deposition,” Lee said.

3D NAND is also challenging, but the production steps are slightly different than 3D stacked DRAM and logic. The key step to 3D NAND is to build a multitude of oxide/nitride or oxide/doped polysilicon stacked layers. Another key step is to fill the deep memory holes or trench slits. “The top foreseeable challenges are ultra-high-aspect ratio (>40:1) conductor etch and dielectric etch with high etch selectivity to the hard mask,” Lee said in a recent paper.

There’s another challenge as well: Can the 3D NAND developers put their products into production? The main 3D NAND contenders are Toshiba’s BiCS, Samsung’s VG-NAND, Macronix’ BE-SONOS, Hynix’ vertical cylindrical FG, SanDisk’s 3D memory and Intel/Micron’s stackable PCM, according to Forward Insights.

The 3D NAND industry emerged in 2007, when Toshiba unveiled its Bit Cost Scalable (BiCS) technology. BiCs makes use of a “punch-and plug” structure and charge trap memory films. Toshiba has fabricated a prototype 32-Gbit BiCS flash memory test array with a 16-layer memory cell using 60nm design rules.

In 2009, Samsung described its 3D NAND technology based on a terabit cell array transistor (TCAT). A year later, Macronix talked about a BE-SONOS charge-trapping technology. And Hynix is developing a 3D dual control-gate with a surrounding floating-gate.

One of the newer candidates is the stackable phase-change memory (PCM) device from Intel and Micron. Micron recently announced a 2D PCM device based on a 45nm process. In PCM, it is difficult to scale the cell array. PCM is also limited by the power required to change from the crystalline to an amorphous state.

Researchers are looking at new materials beyond traditional GST-225 schemes to overcome these limitations. Among those materials are binary and ternary alloys like germanium telluride (GeTe). “GeTe is one of the enablers,” said Jean-Luc Delcarri, general manager of Altatech, a CVD and inspection equipment subsidiary of Soitec. Altatech has installed its CVD system at CEA-Leti, which is developing PCM for the sub-20nm node.

It’s unclear which 3D NAND devices will eventually move into production, but there is a huge appetite for NAND in mobile and other applications. “I can’t say which vendor is ahead,” Applied’s Lee said. “I think vertical NAND will likely be adopted in traditional applications. The biggest applications are smartphones, tablets and mobile computing. What is still to come are SSDs.”

3D NAND debate
Analysts have slightly different viewpoints. “The only company that has told me a schedule is Toshiba, who plans to sample 3D NAND in 2013,” said Jim Handy, an analyst with Objective-Analysis, a research firm.

“The thing that is driving (3D NAND) is the use for more bytes in video,” Handy said. “3D NAND is straightforward for a DRAM maker since it has stacked SiO2 and polysilicon layers like a stacked capacitor DRAM and trenches like a trench cell DRAM. I have heard that the aspect ratios for the trenches are somewhat tricky.”

Greg Wong, an analyst with Forward Insights, does not see commercial production for 3D NAND until 2015 or so. “NAND flash manufacturers are pushing planar NAND flash to sub-20nm nodes. As they extend the roadmap for 2D NAND, the introduction of 3D NAND gets pushed out,” Wong said.

“There are technical challenges with etching a high aspect ratio pillar and multiple stacks, but the big challenge is economic. The investment required is significantly more for 3D than 2D NAND,” Wong said. “3D NAND employing charge trapping technology will have some challenges in meeting the performance specifications of 2D NAND. However, by stacking multiple layers, lower cost per bit can be attained.”

Alan Niebel, president of Web-Feet Research, agreed. “3D NAND should enter the market around 2015 (or after). Designing and qualifying 3D NAND will probably be a seven year process, which started in 2007. Concurrently, it takes easily another five years to perfect the manufacturing and especially in manufacturing 3D ICs,” Niebel said.

“3D NAND should have a much higher areal density and lower cost than 2D NAND, since the F2 divides in half with each layer, probably four layers max per chip. Performance in both speeds (read and write) and endurance will deteriorate with 3D NAND compared to 2D,” he added. “The stacked structure will have more bits to address, more interconnects with each layer and longer distance from cell to controller that will add latency to the 3D. Perhaps endurance may not suffer too much if the lithography is the same for 2D and 3D NAND cells, but by stacking them in 3D, these additional steps could possibly fatigue the control gate oxides and further reduce endurance.”

Besides the technology challenges, Applied’s Lee sees another hurdle—cost. “NAND vendors will go into 3D only if they can meet a cost target. We are quite confident the cost structure of 3D NAND will be lower than 2D NAND. The reason is that 3D NAND is less lithographic and double-patterning heavy,” he said.

Semiconductor growth is due for a significant upturn over the next five years, with especially strong growth in NAND, microcontrollers and DRAM, according to research firm IC Insights.

DRAM is forecast to grow from a negative 2.2% in the period from 2006 to 2011 to a compound annual growth rate of 9.6% between 2011 and 2016. NAND flash will grow 16.6 percent during that period, but it has been growing at a rate of 16% between 2006 and 2011, so this is basically flat. Microcontrollers, meanwhile, will increase from 6.2% to 7.8%, and analog will grow from 3.1% to 3.3%.

What’s particularly interesting is the average selling price for ICs, which showed a decline of 2.9% between 2006 and 2011. The research house predicts ASPs will increase to an average of 1.7%.

By Mark LaPedus

ASML Holding announced that TSMC has joined its customer co-investment program. TSMC has taken a 5% stake in ASML. C. J. Muse, an analyst at Barclays, said: ”TSMC and ASML announced that TSMC will join Intel in ASML’s co-investment program, which is aimed at accelerating the development of both 450mm manufacturing and EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography. We had expected TSMC to join the program, as it seemed unlikely they would want to leave their biggest competitor in Intel as the sole participant in such a key program.”

Synopsys’ move to acquire Ciranova and SpringSoft will expand its efforts in the custom design and verification markets.

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) announced that worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $24.38 billion for the month of June 2012, a slight decrease of 0.1 percent from the prior month when sales were $24.40 billion. Based on the SIA figures, “semis now look to be tracking down -2% to -8% year-over-year depending on demand in the month of September,” said Muse from Barclays. “Given continued macro concerns, most of the commentary from semiconductor vendors continues to suggest a more modest recovery than what many had been modeling at the outset of the year.”

The Committee of High-purity Silicon, a wafer industry body whose membership comprises major wafer manufacturers in Japan, sees mixed growth in polycrystalline silicon production, according to Semiconductor Portal Inc., a Web site in Japan.

A record-setting quarter for Apple’s iPad led to a better-than-anticipated Q2 for the tablet market, according to International Data Corporation.

Samsung regained the smartphone lead over Apple, according to iSuppli.

Looking at the Q2 sales ranking for branded NAND flash manufacturers, Samsung remained in first place with $1.788 billion, or 42.4% market share, according to DRAMeXchange.

DRAMeXchange said due to a supply glut, prices of DRAMs are expected to fall in August after a decline of more than 7 percent in July.

Wireless applications will prove to be the saving grace of the global semiconductor market in 2012, according to iSuppli.

Strategy Analytics predicts a surprising 11.5% growth in automotive semiconductor demand for 2012.

According to Databeans, sales in the global medical semiconductor market should remain nearly flat from 2011 to 2012.

Mazda selected Mentor Graphics’ Volcano Network Architect (VNA) software to verify its network bandwidth usage.

By Mark LaPedus

The semiconductor equipment market continues to improve in 2012, prompting VLSI Research Inc. to raise its fab tool forecast for the second time in recent weeks.

Citing recent moves by Intel, Samsung and others to raise their respective capital spending this year, VLSI Research now predicts the semiconductor equipment market will reach $49.2 billion in 2012, down 7.1 percent over 2011. And in another positive move, VLSI Research also raised its overall IC forecast from 3.9 percent growth to 4.3 percent in 2012.

Not long ago, the research firm originally projected that the fab tool market would fall by a whopping 20.1 percent in 2012. Then, in February, VLSI Research raised its forecast and predicted the semiconductor equipment market would reach $45.6 billion in 2012, down 9.8 percent over 2011.

“Chip makers are generally optimistic and many of them are seeing positive trends in the market,” according to a new report from VLSI Research. “They expect a healthier business environment in the coming quarters. Foundries are at the forefront and investing aggressively as most of their leading-edge capacity is tapped out. The equipment industry is seeing a nice rebound following a weak Q4.”

There are some troubling signs as well. David Rubenstein, an analyst with Religare Capital Markets, an investment banking firm, sees an uphill battle for fab tool makers in 2012. “We project that capital spending will fall 12 percent year-over-year in 2012,” he said. “We forecast -19 percent FPD capex in 2012 and further declines in 2013.”

One of the problems is the ongoing memory downturn, which is hurting capital spending. “The memory sector remains a drag on the overall activity,” according to VLSI Research. “NAND orders are still soft as the industry burns some excess SDD inventory. DRAM activity remains pretty much frozen.”

Greg Wong, an analyst with Forward Insights, a research firm, sees a rebound in NAND flash. That market is “fairly weak right now due to seasonality. But it should starting improving in the second half with new smartphones, tablets and ultrabook launches,” Wong said.

Total inventories increased nearly 1 percent in February and are projected to jump by another 3 percent in March, according to VLSI Research. Total IC inventories in March will be 7 percent lower than from last year’s levels, according to the firm.

The fab tool vendors are also seeing a mixed picture. At the recent Applied Materials Inc. analyst event, Applied CEO Mike Splinter acknowledged that the company sees a challenging environment.

At the event, Applied guided fiscal 2012 revenues and EPS of $9.1-to-$9.5 billion and $0.85-to-$0.95, respectively, falling short of consensus of $9.6 billion and $0.96. This is “driven primarily by weakness in non-semi segments” like solar and displays, said C.J. Muse, an analyst with Barclays Capital.

“On the positive side, Applied is poised to benefit from several positive trends in semi,” including “increasing process steps in the move to 2Xnm/1Xnm, a move to 3D NAND, sustainability of wafer fab equipment spending, and growing capital intensity in display,” he said.